


when love dies, it becomes a lonely ghost

by clickingkeyboards



Series: The Ghost AU [3]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Gen, Ghost!Hazel, Ghosts, Grief, Hurt No Comfort, Ouija Boards, Spirits, seance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 10:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23350060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Daisy performs her seance trick to ‘summon’ the ghost of Miss Bell, and summons someone utterly different instead.
Series: The Ghost AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677988
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	when love dies, it becomes a lonely ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritesEveryBlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesEveryBlueMoon/gifts), [Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat/gifts).



With a torch balancing on her knees, bathing the ouija board in light, Daisy Wells looked rather goulish. The torch threw light up onto her face from below, her eyes lit up blue and rimmed with red, and the shadows of her sharp features dove into her hairline in a way reminiscent of the ghost stories that she so loved to tell. For a second, in a flash of light that glared across her face as she jostled the torch, her eyes were lit up. The light was no longer faint, trickling out at the edges of the torches’ beam. Instead, it shone a spotlight into her eyes and the tears gathering in them. Beanie could have sworn that, in that meager fraction of a second before she readjusted the torch, Daisy looked utterly lost. 

Placing delicate fingers on the planchette, Daisy swallowed down the idea of Hazel’s ghost and set her eyes on the letter ‘H’. There would be no ghosts tonight, no supernatural entities manipulating the board, simply because ghosts were not real. All there would be was Daisy Wells, alone with the fate of the school at her fingertips, manipulating her dormitory into knowing the truth.

She had not seen the body herself, and her only witness had vanished —  _ died _ — but Hazel Wong’s word would live on long after her presence vanished from Deepdean. If Daisy could not trust the dead’s word, then who could she trust?

A pity that Hazel could not tell them what had happened to her.

_ Dead men tell no tales. _

Daisy shook the thought from her head. Dead bodies existed and it was that existence she thrived off, but Hazel Wong was not one of them. She could not be.

With no resistance from the board — why would there be? — she began to manipulate the planchette.

“Ooh, H-E-L—” Beanie whispered in delighted horror.

“Shut  _ up _ , Beans,” Kitty hissed back to her.

The planchette was on a steady course towards the letter ‘P’, an obvious path that was leaving Beanie gasping and Kitty rolling her eyes at the cliche, when Daisy suddenly felt resistance under her fingers. Somebody else was directing the planchette, pushing back from the ‘O’ that she had just landed on and forcing back to the ‘N’.

“H-E-L-P,” Lavinia said, making evil eyes at Beanie and delighting in scaring the girl. True to her word about being terrified, Beanie shrieked in fear.

Frustrated, Daisy swallowed down her noise of annoyance and moved the planchette to the M.

M-U-R—

Daisy began to move the planchette towards the ‘D’ but felt a pull under her hands. Someone was pushing on the planchette and was  _ not _ being subtle about it.

“Whoever is pushing it towards the ‘H’,  _ stop it _ !” she finally yelled, breaking composure and glaring around at her dormmates, who all looked confused rather than guilty. “We aren’t getting an accurate reading!”

With the finality of her shriek, the planchette was snatched away from under all of their fingers and flung against the foot of Lavinia’s bed. Despite her best efforts, Daisy felt terror grip hold of her as her friends screamed about her. For a horrifying moment, she felt that the supernatural was very much real. 

Then she noticed a flash of dark and light and felt a flash of horror tear through her heart. Someone was crouching beside her, taking up the space that she had unconsciously left for Hazel.

“Why were you fighting me, Daisy?” Hazel asked, reaching up with a translucent hand to touch Daisy’s face. Her fingertips dipped into Daisy’s cheek in a cool stab, and the two girls locked eyes.

A ghost.  _ A ghost _ . Hazel was a ghost, and a hideously ghoulish one at that. Her eyes were wide and haunted, and her hair hung in bedragged tangles sweaty from a fight that was lost. Blood dropped from between her lips and there was a furious and angry mark around her neck, friction burn worn through her skin so badly in some places that it drew blood. Her tie was distressed, pushed up around her neck so tight it pinched the skin, as if to strangle her.

“I was really trying to communicate! You were fighting with me, Daisy! Why didn’t you let me talk?” she said in a voice that sounded rasping, as if her vocal cords had been crushed.

In an instant, Daisy realises. The murderer had seen Hazel, seen her when Daisy assured her that they wouldn’t have, and murdered her to cut off the loose end.

Grief threatened to take hold until she blinked and saw the ghoulish ghost Hazel again, smiling peacefully as if content with death, and Daisy just wanted to  _ scream _ .

“You aren’t real.”

“What?” gasped Hazel with hurt, reaching out for her best friend in a motion that has her hand phase through Daisy’s shoulder in a cool ache.

“This isn’t logical, Hazel. This isn’t right.” Her voice climbed to hysterical heights and she near shrieked her last words. “Ghosts don’t exist, Hazel. You aren’t  _ real _ !”

With that final, failing effort at grasping back control of a life sent pinwheeling, Daisy turned and fled. 


End file.
